Hey there Association members! Here for your enjoyment is a recording of Yang Zhenduo calling out the names of the long form which I recorded August 10, 1996. In those days, at the end of the long form seminar the group would practice the entire form together with Yang Zhenduo calling out the names of the moves in Chinese with no translation. He does this somewhat after the manner of Peking opera, and with considerable verve. On this particular occasion we were going a little faster than usual and the form only took about 22 minutes (the Association used to sell another version of this which had Chinese music and was a bit longer, around 26 minutes I think). If you save the file to your hard drive and you have Windows Media Player, you can use the Burn option to write it to a CD which you could then play with a portable CD player as you practice.

It is good to have the Master call-out while the group performing together. This makes the entiregroup in unison and it will help the performers to concentrate on each moves. Here in Malaysia,we do practice with the call-out or call-out with background music. Most of the curriculum when we practice, the hand-form103, 67 sword or the 13 saber, we have the call-out. This again will help the performer to relaxed down as they move along and the mind are more alert to every moves.

I notice on your recording of Master Yang Zhenduo having an extra call-out on 上步揽雀尾 - 左掤，右掤，捋， 挤，and 按。In every call-out from Ban Lan Chui to the Shang Bu - Lan Que Wei, Master Yang always remind the practitioners on the miss-out transition of Zuo Peng to You Peng. In fact, it is good to locate and call-out from left to right Peng. I like it in a way he remindus in the transition movement. On the saber, Master Yang did a lot of large movements call-out, where the Yu Nu Chuan Suo Ba Fang Shi 玉女穿梭八方势, he again remind us that the saber should separated out in a rounded form.Having a lot of sub-movements like 转身 (Zhuan Shen) turning the body around, 跨虎刀 (Kua Hu Dao) Straddle Tiger with Saber, 环刀 (Dao) separated out in a circular motion and back towards the body in a horizontal circle , sometimes we call it as sharpeningthe blade in a rounded form.

Mr Jerry Karin, do you happen to have any recording on Master Yang Zhenduo call-out the sword form? If yes, can youpossibly upload it so that we can share by learning from Master Yang calling out. We would like to take a look at the differences of call-outby great masters. As the old Chinese say, "ones learn until he/she gets old". We said that by learning throughout the entire life, we have knowledge until the end of our time (old age) equal to wisdom.

Yes, you are right Mr Jerry Karin, Master Yang seem to call-out his form in a way similar to the Chinese Opera.It is also very similar to the marching formation, as an officer giving out command. You can see the entire group doing one formationas in one command. Similar to Tai-Chi, where we have to be in unison when we move around.

Anyway, Mr Jerry Karin thanks for your upload, we enjoy very much the call-out from Master Yang Zhenduo.

Compliments of the Season and I wish you all the Tai-Chi practitioners good health, great happiness for the new year and Happy Chinese New Year to the Chinese community and All the Best.

I do not think that Yang Zhenduo has made an English version, since his English is quite limited.

As for Yang Jun, he tends to use Chinese even during English-language seminars when he begins "calling" the form. Everyone seems pretty able to follow along and stay in sink, even though they do not understand Chinese. I can speculate that Yang Jun is more comfortable doing it this way, but it also might be because we are an international association where many languages are spoken. Why give preference to English? Another issue is that the common English translations sometimes lose some of the meaning or are even misleading. A final concern is that the Chinese has a certain rhythm and a particular way of matching the movements. Coming up with an English version that would be equally suitable would not be a trivial undertaking.